Glorious spring weather graced the first annual Benicia Mini Maker Faire (about 30 minutes north of Oakland, CA in the San Francisco Bay Area). The lovely thing about Mini Maker Faires is how easy it is to have conversation with these always-interesting makers. The other aspect is the local […]

Analog is back. Boutique synth makers have entered Eurorack, one by one (Dave Smith, Tom Oberheim). KORG has remade analog hits of yore, and now produces hardware like the SQ-1 sequencer that interfaces with analog gear. Arturia, once known only as a plug-in vendor, has analog Control Voltage ins and outs on its new hardware gear.

Now, Roland seems next to climb on board the analog renaissance. The question is, just how far are they going to go? The answer should be coming in April at Musikmesse, and the first hint has just leaked out.

Just a few years ago, such a possibility would have seemed ludicrous – maybe even in the pre-AIRA world. Roland’s idea of legacy had to do with vague product name references and a full embrace of digital modeling as an improvement on the original – mostly in the interest of creating traditional instrument sounds. But then, AIRA happened, and it became clear that Roland was willing to create independent, new products. That led to the SBX-1 sync box, first seen by us at last year’s Musikmesse. At the time, I thought it indicated a new direction for the country. But I didn’t necessarily expect this.

I was hearing rumors on the street even last March when the SBX-1 appeared that the company was pondering an entry into modular – maybe even the increasingly-popular Eurorack format. They were certainly interested in the modular scene; Roland executives were seen buzzing around the ALEX4 booth and playing with this gear. (ALEX4 is run by Andreas Schneider of Schneidersladen; I shared that booth with MeeBlip and, full disclosure, ALEX4 is our European distributor.)

And that I imagine has many of you saying… wait, who’s Reon? You can be forgiven for not knowing this Japanese manufacturer of analog gear like the Drift Box; they’re known more in Japan than outside the country. (See, for instance, this product page in Japanese, which is always entertaining when Google Translated.)

I’m not convinced this is just a REON repackage, though that’s possible. However, it wouldn’t be unprecedented for Roland, as a Japanese company, to collaborate with someone in Japan. (See, for instance, the KORG collaboration with Xseed on its Nintendo DS outings.) It may simply be that they pictured the REON as a friendly bit of gear they could plug some cables into.

Here’s a look at the Reon Driftbox in English, from Perfect Circuit Audio. It’s a nice box, for sure, and might be a hint at what to expect:

My guess is… actually, I really don’t know. For a company like Roland, making an enclosure is no great effort. So it seems to me that this might be desktop unit with CV connectivity than a Eurorack per se. (Eurorack is, after all, just a format for standardizing on rack mounts and connections – it’s not the only way to go analog or even to go modular.) But I do think it’s very possible that this is analog hardware, and not just a digital modeling unit with some CV ins and outs. In fact, I’m fairly certain it’s not related to the JD Xi / Xa synths, which seem to have a sound architecture outside the AIRA line. If anything, it’d be more likely to use a SYSTEM-1 digital engine and add CV ins and outs.

Also, our sources tell us this picture only scratches the surface of what we’re about to find out.

But given that the AIRA lineup cashed in on the growing interest in dance music, and given it already includes a CV-connected device, and given the success of KORG in the analog world, I think it’s absolutely possible that Roland is going analog with this – at least analog control from input to output, but possibly even a venture into analog sound circuitry.

Join CDM with our reporting from Musikmesse and we’ll find out together.

Surrealistic sculptor Ellen Jewett combines art, science, and medical illustration into an imaginative fusion of natural forms. Inspired by wildlife, Ellen transforms the familiar aspects of plants and animals into unique hybrid creatures. Realistic details flow from animal to plant. Some pieces even include industrial elements in order to highlight […]

While attending the Midwest RepRap Fest this weekend, Josh Rowley and Sanjay Mortimer of E3D took a moment to explain how hot ends work and to fill the crowd in on some of the projects they are working on. E3D’s line of hot ends have become the gold standard for […]

Make: Magazine Volume 44 is all about DRONES! Don’t have the issue? Get yours today! Flying drones may be able to do many jobs in the future, or possibly deliver everything from beer to defibrillators. For now though, it seems that most (non-millitary) drones exist for the entertainment of their owners. Here […]

The path forward is clear: there’s no reason in this age of digital producing and DJing that music needs to be stereo.

The need is there, but so far, not the solution. A file format announced in a press briefing at Miami’s Winter Music Conference and made public today wants to succeed where others failed.

It’s called Stems, and there are a few details that make it different.

It’s simple. “Stems” – the format – include four tracks. So that could be bass, drums, melody, vocal, for instance. (Or bagpipe, castrati chorus, tambourines, and banjo. But the point is, dividing things into four makes a lot of sense.) You can also choose the order, color, and add names to individual tracks.

It’s compatible and built on existing standards. A new file format? Good luck. (See xkcd #927.) But Stems uses an MP4 container format (that’s MP4 only, not MP3). Load your Stems file onto any software or hardware that supports MP4, and you’ll get stereo playback of the mix – including on the Pioneer CDJ. ID3 tags for the track work, too (for the overall mix). Load it into software that supports Stems – which we’re assuming will most likely be some sort of DJ software – and you can play back the individual parts. (And mix them, remix them, add effects, whatever.) It’s really just four MP4s.

It’s free for anyone to use. An official website coming in June will detail how to make the files. There will also be a free Stem Creator for anyone wanting to create their own files. And the file format will be not only detailed on the Stems website in full, but there are no licensing fees for creation, distribution, or use. (No, you don’t have to pay to get the specs, either – I’m looking at you, MIDI.) No word yet on how the Stems branding will work.

It’s backed by some key players. Native Instruments announced that Traktor Pro 2.7.4 or later already have Stems support. (See the public beta.) Beatport, Juno, and Traxsource all promise to sell Stems format starting in June. In Miami, DJ/producer Luciano and KCRW’s Music Director Jason Bentley joined a panel to introduce the idea. 16 labels have chimed in with support, too, including Mobilee, Monkeytown, 50Weapons, Get Physical, and InFiné. I suspect it’s really the labels and stores, combined with Traktor, that could kick-start this thing.

It’ll be easy to DJ with. Any group of four controller faders/encoders can be mapped to the different parts – the structure of NI’s own F1 and new D2 all map logically, and so will a lot of other things.

Now there’s a reason to use it – money. The Stems backers are pretty direct about their appeal: release Stems so you can charge more for your music. And while the pitch is for a “premium” price, the timing is also essential. With Beatport launching its own free streaming service, with listeners more likely to stream, and with DJ apps like djay even adding Spotify support, producers and labels need a format that they can still sell. Vinyl alone probably isn’t enough to keep them afloat.

So…

Who’s it for? The main audience is clearly DJs: the idea is to convince producers to share stems in a standard format that makes it easier for DJs to think about playing with individual tracks and not only the mixdown. The Stems FAQ suggests even producers might want to use Stems to move their own music between their production software and a live set. That’s less of an issue if you’re DJing with Ableton Live, but certainly could be a boon if you use Traktor, Serato, and so on. I imagine this could also target consumer listeners – remix your artist’s favorite tracks. See NinjaTune’s NINJA JAMM for one take on this idea.

Can it be a standard? Now, it’s really technically a de facto standard, and a license free standard, not a standard or open standard in the technical sense – there’s no real governance that I can see on the “standard” side, and it’s “open” only in that it’s published and free to implement. But that could be enough, with the success of MIDI a prime example.

What’s the competition? Interestingly enough, even Wikipedia has an article on stem releases. The reason? There really aren’t that many such releases to begin with. Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails deserve some real credit, with remix.nin.com, Year Zero (which also included GarageBand and Ableton Live formats), and Ghosts I–IV. Open licensing means you can remix the last of these and redistribute what you make; the stems in this case will mostly be for DJs to use when playing, but would have to be licensed to sample. And looking through that list, you see a confirmation of what you might suspect – most release stems in simple stereo formats, and just give you more files. It’s even possible to do this with iTunes, easier still with Bandcamp. But this isn’t a terribly common practice, and releases for specific DAWs have tended to be sporadic and typically focus on remix artists, not DJs.

And… is this a good idea? Actually, I was pondering this after writing this, especially after I saw Engadget wrote this:

“If you head to a dance music festival this summer and notice that one or two sets are particularly creative, you’ll know why.”

Well – wait a minute. What makes a creative set is not necessarily doing mash-ups of stems from different songs or cutting out the vocal. So let’s ponder this: it really will be up to both the artist releasing tracks, and the DJ using stems, to determine whether using stems is a good idea. I suppose the hope is that this gives creative DJs additional choices – even if (as you’ll see raised in comments) it might also make bad DJs worse. Then again, lots of things can make bad DJs worse – turning down their master volume may be the way to make them better. The key to making use of Stems may be making use of them selectively, as with any other special technique. DJing has done just fine with mixing stereo tracks since the beginning, often in two-channel configurations, even if product manufacturers increasingly push live remixing as a way of convincing you to buy new hardware and software. So, making use of Stems should be a means to an end. And tasteful DJs may find a way of using this that still shows some deference to the intent of the original track.

What next? It’s not hard to see why Native Instruments would support this, since the ability to mix beyond simple 2-channel stereo is part of Traktor’s market differentiation. At the same time, it’s encouraging to see NI back a reasonably open standard, and not just double down on their own proprietary Remix Sets and the like. (It’s also nice that this is simple – making Stems would be a lot more straightforward than authoring Remix Sets.)

But that also means we’ll need to see support beyond just Traktor for the format to really take off. We’ll see if other app developers get onboard, or decide this is just an “NI thing.” And hardware support would surely lag software. At least Traktor solves some of the chicken-and-egg problems of a format of this kind: it has a built-in audience of producers and DJs.

I’m not even sure what ideal DAW support should look like, since DAWs generally have an arbitrary number of tracks. But that means the Stem Creator has to work pretty well in the interim.

But I have to say, while I met the headline for the media announcement with a heavy dose of skepticism, the more I learn about Stems, the more optimistic I am. There’s clearly desire now for DJs to set themselves apart, particularly in the age of streaming and instant access, so the demand on that side is there. And there’s desire on the part of artists and labels, not least as they increasingly sell music to specialists and DJs. What might make Stems work even given past failures to solve this problem is that it’s actually easy as well as desirable to implement. And that may lead to a “built it and they will come effect” – because it’s both easy to do and easy to justify.

And it’s certainly a lot better than some new proprietary format — or the status quo of random a cappellas here and there or removing vocals with (gah) EQ.

We’ll be watching for this in June. Let us know if you have any questions. (I’ll meanwhile investigate more details of how implementation works on the creation and Traktor DJ side.)

The announcement event. Okay… so, it’s hard to make a file format visual. But the future is so bright, Jason Bentley from KCRW is wearing shades.

Check out this unbelievable watch — The magnificent Complication Poétique Midnight Planétarium — which displays a tiny model of the solar system on your wrist. The watch shows representations of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. The version without the diamonds will set you back $274,613 in U.S. dollars. The one with diamond is about $366,101!

To learn more about this fascinating craft, I recommend Watchmaking by George Daniels. The book follows the making of the precision timekeeper, step by step, and is illustrated at each stage with line drawings and brief explanatory captions. The text is easy to follow and to not overly technical.

Dedicated wave editor Audacity has found enduring popularity, as a free and open source tool for working with sound. It runs on Linux, Windows, and OS X – with support for older Mac operating systems, which these days is sometimes tough to find. But just being free and open isn’t reason enough to use something, particularly when a lot of DAWs do a pretty decent job of wave editing.

This latest version of Audacity, 2.1.0, comes with some additions that might make it worth revisiting.

First, there’s spectral editing. In most software, audio editing is performed by time only. Here, you can drag over particular frequency ranges to select just those portions, for audio repair or simply highlighting certain portions of sonic content. That’s been available in some commercial tools, but it’s not normally found in DAWs and now you get it for free. See the spectral selection additions to the manual.

Second, you can now preview VST and Audio Unit effects (plus the open LADSPA format) in real-time. That’s useful for making Audacity an effect host, and can combine nicely with chains and batch processing. That is, you can preview effects live to adjust them (as you can do in a DAW) and then batch-process a bunch of sound (which your DAW can’t do easily). Plug-in hosting in general is improved, including the ability to work with multiple VST and add any effects to chains.

Audacity still isn’t the prettiest software ever (ahem) – aesthetically and functionally, it seems the UI is due for a reboot. But I know it’s an important tool, especially for musicians on a budget. And this version is worth adding to your toolset.

It isn’t as full-featured as Audacity – real-time effects preview is limited to VST, for instance, and the spectral view is not editable. It’s also free-as-in-beer; the code is closed. But the UI is substantially cleaner, and it has some nice features like multi-edit support. Thanks to Tom D in comments for the tip.

Call for entries extennded Deadline: 18 March 2015 Call For Artists, Athens Digital Arts Festival Public Space_s Athens Digital Arts Festival invites you to submit proposals for its next edition taking place in spring in Athens. Deadline for submissions is 4 March 2015. In our times, the notion of public space appears to be one of the most contradictory conc […]

Call for entries Deadline: 31 March 2015 BLACK BOX SEATTLE Festival Dates: May 6 – June 7, 2015 Artists from around the world are invited to submit work to BLACK BOX – the first international art, film and technology festival in Seattle. A multi-platform program of significant scope, BLACK BOX presents contemporary artists who expand the language of cinema. […]

Call for entries Deadline: 1 May 2015 Iterations As Habitats The 18th annual Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival (FLEFF) will begin its yearlong exploration of the theme of Habitats with concerts, workshops, master classes, performances, and films. FLEFF invites submissions of digital media projects designed to run online or on mobile devices for its on […]

Call for entries Deadline: 7 April 2015 Playable City Award Call 2015 Applications for the Playable City Award 2015 are now open Creatives from around the world are invited to propose distinctive ideas that put people and play at the heart of the Future City. All over the world governments and tech companies are investing in smart systems for cities, using c […]

Call for entries Deadline. 8 June 2015 Lumen Prize – Digital Art – Call For Entries The Lumen Prize Exhibition, the global award and tour for digitally created art, is delighted to announce that it is opening its fourth call for entries on 9th March 2015. This year, there will be a US$10,000 prize fund as well as a global tour to Asia, Europe and the US. T […]

Call for entries Deadline: 15 May 2015 Womenartconnect Call For Women Artists, Filmmakers & Choreographers SUMMARY CinéWomen launches its fourth annual call for women artists, filmmakers and choreographers. Building on the success of the third edition, CinéWomen continues showcasing video, film and dance practice from around the world. Honoring the influ […]

Call for entries Deadline: 30 March 2015 Incubarte International Art Festival 2015 announces the open call for art proposals for its 7th edition, whose aim is to value and promote contemporary art in the city of Valencia, Spain. This call is for artists of any nationality or age. The festival will take place on June 18-21, 2015. Following the festival’s four […]

Call for entries Deadline: 1 April 2015 FILMIDEO 2015 10th Annual Film and Video Screenings. Filmideo is a yearly event, that celebrates the great diversity and work of independent filmmakers and video artists from around the globe. For an entire month, IAC transforms it’s gallery space into a screening theater, where artists works are projected onto a 10’ x […]

US - MI - Big Rapids, Fashion Studies Faculty Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University (KCAD) in Grand Rapids, MI is currently accepting applications for an Assistant Professor of Fashion Stud […]

US - IN - Fort Wayne, Required qualifications include a MA in Art Education or Pre-Art Therapy, completed by August 10, 2015. A Ph.D or Ed.D in Art Education or Art Therapy is desired but strong MA candidates are encourage […]

US - OH - Cleveland, The Society for Photographic Education (SPE) is seeking a full-time Executive Director to work in partnership with its board of directors to support the growth and long-term sustainability of the org […]

US - RI - Providence, The Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University invites applications from exceptional junior scholars who have demonstrated a capacity for innovative research and cr […]

US - NC - Chapel Hill, QUALIFICATIONS: • Seven to ten years of increasing responsibility in a museum of significant size with the past five years in a senior position; a demonstrated record of accomplishment. A minimum […]

US - NY - Sanborn, Terminal degree or its equivalent in animation or a related field; experience working with Maya and Adobe Creative Suite software; professional experience in animation. Experience teaching animati […]

New York State Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman on Monday announced a settlement with the National Junior College Athletic Association under which the N.J.C.A.A. agreed to end a rule limiting eligibility to students who attended high school in the United States for at least three years. Schneiderman's announcement said that community colleges in Ne […]

With all the extensive consultation about the Postsecondary Institutions Ratings System during the past 18 months, all the meetings and the many conversations, we know almost nothing about its likely impact on accreditation, our all-important effort by colleges, universities and accrediting organizations working together to define, judge and improve academic […]

The Rhodes Scholarship Program will soon expand to China, The New York Times reported. The article noted that the expansion reflects a push by many of the world's top universities to recruit talent in China, and also a desire by many of those universities (and the Rhodes scholarships) to raise money in the country. Ad keywords: international […]

San Francisco State bars use of university funds to travel to Indiana. Connecticut governor bars all public colleges (and other state agencies) from using state funds to do so. Do these moves raise academic freedom issues? Editorial Tags: Gay rights/issues […]

What’s the first thing you noticed about the opposite sex? As it turns out, that might depend on what you’re looking for. In today's Academic Minute, Western Oregon University's Jaime Cloud profiles human mating psychology. Cloud is an evolutionary psychologist at Western Oregon. A transcript of this podcast can be found here. Section: Academic Min […]

After years of having one of the most highly subsidized athletics departments, a universitywide panel at Rutgers pushes reforms that would end contributions from student fees and the university. Editorial Tags: Athletics […]

Both Rutgers and Fairleigh Dickinson Universities saw campus Internet connectivity suffer this weekend as the institutions came under distributed denial-of-service attacks, NJ.com reported. Such attacks can slow a website to a crawl or crash it completely by directing large amounts of web traffic to one site. By Monday morning, Rutgers tweeted that "I.T […]

County attorney seeks injunction to block closure and to replace president and board, charging that they have violated several laws. Editorial Tags: College administrationImage Caption: Sweet Briar College […]

New York State Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman on Monday announced a settlement with the National Junior College Athletic Association under which the N.J.C.A.A. agreed to end a rule limiting eligibility to students who attended high school in the United States for at least three years. Schneiderman's announcement said that community colleges in Ne […]

With all the extensive consultation about the Postsecondary Institutions Ratings System during the past 18 months, all the meetings and the many conversations, we know almost nothing about its likely impact on accreditation, our all-important effort by colleges, universities and accrediting organizations working together to define, judge and improve academic […]

The Rhodes Scholarship Program will soon expand to China, The New York Times reported. The article noted that the expansion reflects a push by many of the world's top universities to recruit talent in China, and also a desire by many of those universities (and the Rhodes scholarships) to raise money in the country. Ad keywords: international […]

San Francisco State bars use of university funds to travel to Indiana. Connecticut governor bars all public colleges (and other state agencies) from using state funds to do so. Do these moves raise academic freedom issues? Editorial Tags: Gay rights/issues […]

What’s the first thing you noticed about the opposite sex? As it turns out, that might depend on what you’re looking for. In today's Academic Minute, Western Oregon University's Jaime Cloud profiles human mating psychology. Cloud is an evolutionary psychologist at Western Oregon. A transcript of this podcast can be found here. Section: Academic Min […]

After years of having one of the most highly subsidized athletics departments, a universitywide panel at Rutgers pushes reforms that would end contributions from student fees and the university. Editorial Tags: Athletics […]

Both Rutgers and Fairleigh Dickinson Universities saw campus Internet connectivity suffer this weekend as the institutions came under distributed denial-of-service attacks, NJ.com reported. Such attacks can slow a website to a crawl or crash it completely by directing large amounts of web traffic to one site. By Monday morning, Rutgers tweeted that "I.T […]

County attorney seeks injunction to block closure and to replace president and board, charging that they have violated several laws. Editorial Tags: College administrationImage Caption: Sweet Briar College […]

Join us tonight at 6:30 for the performance “Nameless Series,” by Sébastien RémyResidency Unlimited |residencyunlimited.orgPlease join us for an evening dedicated to the very first opus of French Artist Sébastien Rémy’s project, "Nameless Series". […]

The STRP Biennial, one of the major art and technology events in Europe takes place at the industrial halls of the Klokgebouw, in Eindhoven, The Netherlands from 20 to 29 March, 2015. SCREEN ON | NO SCREEN is the mirroring title of the expo. It consists of works that are fully screen based and online, and works that, while digital in nature, seem to break th […]

Free Music Archive microSong Challenge - deadline 20 February. Get ready, get set, GET SMALL! Get your tiny instruments together (or oversized ones, or ones that are juuuust right), grab a recording device, and add your itty bitty masterpiece(s) to our collection! Every microSong will be licensed under a Creative Commons Zero license so that it can be freely […]

Call for Papers 2015 - Ludomusicologywww.ludomusicology.org9–10 April 2015, University of Utrecht Learning from Video Game Music The Ludomusicology research group will be hosting a two day conference on video game audio to take place on the 9th and 10th of April, 2015 at Utrecht University. We are seeking proposals for papers on the topic of video game musi… […]

An interesting call from the EU digital Art and science network for a residency in Chile! A worldwide call for projects made via Ars Electronica’s online submission tool will be open from mid of December till 9th of February, 2015. The submitting artists have the chance to win a residency at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile. There is free acc […]

Computational tools and media, like computers, programs, wearable artifacts, sensors, haptic interfaces and more, have dramatically transformed the landscape of arts, design, and several other cultural forms. xCoAx is an exploration of this environment in the form of a multi-disciplinary enquiry on aesthetics, computation, communication and the elusive x fac […]

Call for participation: STRP is looking for transformers. Accept an artistic challenge to join other makers, inventors, artists, tinkerers, boffins and students in converting a scrapped analogue machine into an interactive installation. The result will be displayed at the STRP Biennial from 20 - 29 March 2015. Application deadline: January 15, 2015 via http: […]